‘I’m glad to hear that,’ growled Mike, ‘because my impression was I just handed you a crippled rabbit on a four-lane drag. You owe me big time for this, Sally.’
She twinkled at him. ‘Collect any time, Mike. I’m a busy girl, but I can always fit you in, you know.’
‘Behave.’
On the drive back, Barranco was quiet. If his new acquisitions pleased him, he gave no sign. For the whole journey he held a single jacketed rifle slug in his hand, rolling it back and forth between his fingers like a cigar. His face invited neither conversation nor comment. He looked, Chris thought in one particularly morbid moment, like a man who has just been told he has a disease for which there is no known cure.
Chapter Thirty-Two
They dropped Barranco at the Hilton, and were about to pull away again when the security entry alarms went off in violently coloured LEDs and nasal braying. Still buried in his brooding, the Colombian had tried to walk through the scanner with the AK round in his hand. Chris nipped up the steps to the entrance and unwrinkled things, clapped Barranco on the shoulder and told him to get some rest. He’d see him at nine the next morning to go over contractual stuff. Then he piled back in the BMW and they drifted out into the sparse traffic. Mike hooked around Marble Arch and picked up Oxford Street heading east. Still plenty of light in the sky.
‘Want to get something to eat?’ Mike asked him.
‘Sure, why not.’
‘Noodles?’
‘Sounds good to me.’ Chris jerked a thumb back the way they’d come. ‘You think he’s okay?’
‘Barranco? Yeah. Just shellshocked. Probably never seen so much hardware in a single day.’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t look happy.’
Mike snorted. ‘Well he bloody should be happy. That’s the biggest single credit-card payment I’ve ever made.’
‘You didn’t buy any toys for Echevarria yesterday?’
‘On account.’ Mike grinned at him. ‘Sixty-day cancellation clause.’
‘You route that stuff through Sally Hunting as well?’
‘No way. Total account separation, remember. Anyway, Sally doesn’t get her commission unless the money clears. Wouldn’t want—‘
The BMW’s phone lit up with a priority call. Mike made a quiet gesture at Chris, and answered.
‘Yeah, Bryant.’
‘Mike. It’s Troy. That stuff about Faulkner you ran past me? Something came up.’
‘Right, he’s here with me, Troy. Tell us what you got.’
There was a brief pause. ‘It’s better we meet. I don’t want to talk on this line. Can you come out to my place?’
Mike glanced across at him. Chris nodded.
‘We’re on our way.’
Troy’s house seemed strangely quiet in the early evening light. It took Chris a moment or two to understand that he was comparing it with memories of the last time he’d been here, when the party was in full swing. He got a determined lock on his creeping paranoia, and followed Mike up to the front door.
The worry must have shown on his face. Mike grinned encouragingly at him.
‘Be alright,’ he said.
Troy Morris answered the bell by securicam before he opened up, ushered them in as if there was a storm coming, and then threw every bolt and security device the door had before he spoke again. The anti-tamper unit whined rapidly up to full charge. Mike looked at Chris and raised an eyebrow.
‘Little jumpy, aren’t we?’
‘You’d better come through,’ said Troy. ‘Someone I want you to meet.’
In the lounge, a thin black man in his early twenties sat twitching restlessly in one of Troy’s armchairs. There was a scar across his lower jaw and his clothes said zone gangwit. He surveyed the new arrivals without enthusiasm.
‘This is Marauder.’ Troy told them. ‘Marauder, this is Mike Bryant. Chris Faulkner. Friends of mine.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Whatever.’
‘Mike, Chris, you want to sit down? Get you a drink?’
Mike Bryant nodded, most of his attention fixed on Marauder. ‘Some of that Polish vodka you keep in the freezer. Small one.’
‘Chris? Single malt, right?’
‘Yeah, if you’ve got it. Thanks.’
‘Aberlour or Lagavulin? Or I’ve got Irish.’
‘Lagavulin’s good. No ice.’
‘Marauder?’
The gangwit rolled his head once back and forth, slowly. He said nothing. Troy shrugged and went out to the kitchen. They sat and waited.
The silence stretched.
‘Who you run with?’ asked Mike suddenly.
Marauder lifted his jaw. ‘Fuck’s it got to do with you?’
Chris tensed. Neither he nor Mike were carrying, and Marauder looked street enough to be a problem in a straight fight. He checked Mike out of the corner of his eye, but saw no signs of impending violence.
‘Just curious,’ said Mike lazily. ‘Just wondered what kind of fuckwit outfit lets its soldiers get strung out on the merchandise.’
Marauder sat up. ‘Hey birdshit, you want to fuck with me?’
‘You don’t understand.’ Mike Bryant’s voice was patient. ‘I’m a suit. I represent the establishment. I wanted to fuck with you, you’d be in a penal hospital donating a kidney to society and your momma’d be out on the street, evicted and giving blowjobs to pay your post-op. Sit down.’
The gangwit was up out of his chair. On the way there, he’d magicked a blade out between the knuckles of his right hand. He brandished it.
‘Hey, fuck you, birdshit.’
‘I’d put that away as well, if I were you. Touch me, and I’ll have your fucking house bulldozed. That’s a promise.’
Marauder dithered, rage etched into his stance. If Mike had got up to meet him, Chris reckoned the gangwit would already have slashed at him.
‘Ernie, put that fucking thing away before I take it off you myself.’ It was Troy, back with a tray of bottles and glasses and an exasperated look on his face. ‘What do you think this is, the Carlton Arms lounge bar? This is my fucking home.’
‘Ernie?’ A huge grin lit up Bryant’s face. ‘Ernie?’
‘You behave as well, Mike. You should know better.’ Troy nodded at the gangwit, who looked away and snicked the blade back out of sight. He lowered himself onto the front edge of the armchair. Chris felt the tension leaking slowly out of him, and breathed again. Mike examined the nails of his right hand. Troy Morris hadn’t even put down the drinks tray.
‘That’s better.’
‘Call yourself a black man,’ muttered Marauder weakly. ‘Fucking line up with them every time, you’re nearly birdshit yourself.’
‘Ah, belt up.’ Troy wasn’t even looking at him any more. He handed drinks round and parked the tray on a coffee table. Settled into the remaining armchair with a whisky of his own, and gestured. ‘This fine example of urban youth has a story to tell. I told him you’d pay him.’
‘Well.’ Mike looked up at the ceiling. ‘That seems fair. Let’s hear it. Ernie.’
There was a sullen, hate-filled pause. Everyone looked at Marauder.
‘Going to cost you,’ he said finally, looking at Chris.
‘Two hundred.’ Chris told him. ‘That’s a promise. Maybe more, if I like it.’
‘You ain’t going to like it at all,’ the gangwit sneered. He seemed to be getting back his poise. ‘You’re Faulkner. Knew that ‘cause I seen you on the TV. Big popular driver, right. Well, turns out you ain’t so fucking popular after all. Turns out someone thinks you’re a fucking sellout.’
Chris felt his guts chill. ‘Go on.’
Marauder nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s it. Crags Posse got the word. Jack a wagon, put a sicario behind the wheel. Someone paid out fifty grand to have you bunnied.’
‘That’s not so much.’
‘It is around the crags, Alike,’ Troy said sombrely. ‘You can get a sicario hit on Iarescu’s patch for a grand, grand and a half. Maybe five, if they have to go in
to town.’
‘Well, expenses.’ Mike gestured. ‘Jacking the car.’
Marauder sneered again. ‘Wasn’t no fucking jack, birdshit. That guy, he knew they were coming. Iarescu sent a sparkman and datarat up to Kilburn to wire that wagon two days before it was jacked. Fucking suit knew, man, they paid him for it.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Chris asked him.
‘Defector. I run with the Gold Hawks—‘
Mike Bryant threw up his hands. ‘Well, why was it such a big fucking secret before, you’re telling us now like it was nothing? Fucking—‘
‘Mike, shut up.’ Chris looked back at the gangwit. ‘Yeah, the Gold Hawks. And?’
Marauder shrugged. ‘Like I said, defector. The sparkman, he came over. He’s black, the Crags are a birdshit gang, they only ever tolerated him for the wirework. He’s got a new girl in Acton now, suits him to get out from under Iarescu. He told me this shit couple of nights ago. I heard Troy was asking, so. Like that.’
Troy leaned forward. ‘Now tell them what the sparkman was doing to the wagon.’
‘Yeah. Said they put in a frequency jammer.’
Chris and Mike looked at each other.
‘A what?’
‘Sparkman didn’t know much about it.’ Marauder seemed to be settling into his role as storyteller. ‘The datarat did most of the work. Seems like he told him it was a system to trick out some kind of alarm. Very expensive, he said. Iarescu got it given to him specially.’
Chris nodded to himself. ‘Uh uh. Mike? Believe me now?’
‘Shit.’ Mike threw himself to his feet. Marauder twitched, but by then Bryant was at the window, staring out. ‘Shit.’
‘You said someone thinks I’m a sellout.’ Chris focused on the gang-wit. He had to ask. ‘What does that mean? Who told you? The sparkman?’
‘Sure. Iarescu was full of it, talking up how the suits were selling each other out. How this guy Faulkner wasn’t a team player, he didn’t belong and that’s how come he was getting greased.’
‘Chris, that could just be Iarescu reinforcing his own loyalty system. Look how much better we are than these fucking suits. Fucking each other over at every opportunity. Not like us, we stand together, and I’m the best fucking boss you ever had. Someone outside Shorn could have got hold of the prox frequencies on the Saab, if they were jacked in at the right level. Lloyd Paul. Nakamura, maybe. Any of them could have bought the information.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Outside the car, it was getting dark. The buildings of the financial district loomed around them as Mike threaded the BMW through deserted streets towards the Shorn block. Most of the lights in the towers were out, and there was a ghost town hush over the whole place. The emptiness of Sunday dying, like the last day of some cycle of civilisation now reaching its end. Chris felt the chill leaking into him again.
‘Why would they do it that way, Mike? It doesn’t make sense. Why trust some punk sicario more than one of their own drivers? Comes to another tender, they can field the best they’ve got against me.’
‘Not if they wanted to use that trick with the jammer. Trade Standards authorities’d be all over them like a crack whore. They’d fine them into bankruptcy.’
‘Exactly.’ Chris shook his head. ‘It doesn’t pay a major corporation to break the rules for the sake of a single driver. Not when there’s no money in it.’
‘So maybe it was personal. Mitsue Jones’s family or something.’
‘Same applies, Mike. They lose the insurance, the pension, the bereavement pay. Fuck it, they go to jail. Nakamura would drop them like vomit, and with no corporate protection more than likely Shorn would have them greased just to make an example.’
‘If they get caught. And revenge is a powerful—‘
‘You think I don’t fucking know that. I—‘ Chris got a leash on himself, appalled at what he’d been about to tell the other man. ‘You’re reaching, Mike. How many families of men you crashed have come after you?’
‘None, but—‘
‘That’s right. None. This is the way things get done, Mike. Road-raging is here to stay. No one breaks the rules any more. They test, they probe, they hammer out new road precedent, but nobody does this. Nobody goes to the trouble unless there’s a hard cash reason. And that means someone inside Shorn.’
‘You’re thinking Makin?’
‘Or Hewitt.’
Bryant shook his head. The Shorn block appeared and he drew to a halt a few metres off the car deck security entry. He leaned his arms on the steering wheel. Stared up at the blank face of the tower.
‘Alright.’ He sighed. ‘Let’s assume you’re right.’
‘Yes, let’s.’
‘Let’s assume the fix was in, like you said, from inside Shorn. That means you were right about Driver Control as well. You know Liz has got contacts with those guys. Maybe I’ll give her a call, get her to do me a favour and ask some questions in the right places.’
‘What?’ Chris looked round, tried to squeeze the sudden pulse of alarm back out of his voice. ‘Liz Linshaw? Ah, maybe that’s not, I mean, is that a good idea? Involving her?’
‘Relax. You could trust Liz with your life.’
‘Yeah, but. I thought you and her were, you know. Over.’
Mike grinned. ‘That woman? No way. It runs hot and cold, depends on what else is going on in our lives. But it’s like gravity. No escape for either one of us. Longer we stay apart, hotter it is when we finally fuck. The last time, she left this bite on my shoulder you wouldn’t believe.’
Chris stared hard at the dashboard. ‘Yeah? What did Suki have to say about that?’
‘Well.’ Mike’s grin turned conspiratorial. ‘You’re not going to believe this either, but you know what I did? Went back to the office, smashed myself in the nose with the end of that baseball bat I’ve got.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah. Fucking agony. Gave myself a serious nosebleed. Dripped it all over my practice gi. Told her I’d snagged a psycho in a sparring session.’
Chris remembered the bruised nose from a few weeks back.
‘That’s what you told me, too.’
‘Well, yeah. Didn’t want to force you to lie for me if it ever came up with Suki.’ Mike Bryant’s expression grew musing. ‘You know, if it weren’t that I already had Suki and Ariana, I really think Liz might have been the one.’
‘You think so, do you?’
Mike nodded sagely. ‘Yeah, I do. She’s really something, Chris.’
On the Shorn car deck, the Saab stood isolated in the gloom. Anyone else clocking weekend time had gone home for dinner. Chris sat in the car for a long time before he started up. The quiet whined in his ears. Across the deck, a faulty roof light spattered on and off like an obscure distress signal. It felt as if he was waiting for someone.
When he finally powered the Saab up and got out into the streets, it was like driving in a dream. The city slid by on either side of him as if cranked past on rollers. The Saab’s interior was a bubble of neurasthenic calm, a safe place he was scared he might not be able to leave easily. The dashboard and wheel, pedals and shift, gave him remote control and a distant, autopilot strength. Options murmured in his ear. Let’s go there. No, here. No. Fuck going anywhere, let’s just leave.
Leave it all behind.
He was almost into the streets of Highgate before the autopilot neurasthenia cut out and he realised this was not the way home.
File #4:Capital Volatility
Chapter Thirty-Three
Carla was already asleep when he got in. He vaguely remembered she’d told him something about a crack-of-dawn start with Mel’s recovery unit on the western periphery. Partnership trials in some structural adjustment consultancy. Chris had never heard of them, but these days that wasn’t so unusual. He had a lot less to do with adjustment programmes now he was out of Emerging Markets, and new SAP consulting groups were always springing up, like mushrooms on a manure heap. It wasn’t rock
et science, after all. Slash public health and education spending, open to foreign capital flows, dynamite local blockages in the legal and labour sectors. Lie about the results, and get the local military to crush inconvenient protest. A trained ape could do it. You could get the paper qualifications by distance learning inside ten weeks. Then all it took was a suit and a driver’s licence.
He stood in the bedroom, watching Carla sleep, and was overcome by a wave of almost unbearable tenderness. He pulled the quilt up a little higher around her shoulders and she muttered something without waking. He slipped out, closed the door gently behind him and went downstairs to the study. Behind another closed door, he ran the porn segment of Liz Linshaw and her plastically enhanced playmate.
He sat for an hour, head propped on one hand, trying to sort out what he felt.
He slept badly, twisted by brutal dreams that evaporated in vague traceries of impending menace when he finally woke. Carla was gone, her side of the bed was almost cold, and light was streaming in through half-open curtains. The bedside clock said ten past eight.
‘Fuck.’
He got out from under the quilt, groped after shirt and trousers and got them on. In the bathroom mirror, he stared at the angry eyes and the stubble, picked up a razor then flung it into the basin and settled for sticking his head under the cold tap. Chilly water trickled around his neck and down his back. He raked it out of his hair, crushed a towel over his head without taking it off the rail and closed his shirt. Slung a tie around his neck. Shoes and cuffs. Wallet and watch. Into the jacket and out the d—
Keys, fuckwit.
He ran back upstairs, couldn’t find them on the bedside table. Remembered his vigil in the study, darted in and grabbed them up off the desk. He kicked the Saab backwards out of the driveway, swerved untidily round in the road at the bottom and left rubber on the worn grey asphalt as he took off westward. He made the Elsenham ramp in record time.
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